


and i've been sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool

by planetcleer



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Emotional Baggage, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Fake AH Crew, Hacker Gavin Free, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Joel Heyman is a Jerk, M/M, Physical Abuse, Slow Burn, Underage Drinking, Underage Drug Use, additional ah/rt employees later on, anyway this will Not be a happy story, at least not at first, pls give me a break i started this before he announced he left, some only referenced/mentioned, some tags may change, this is More a Gavin fic than a relationship fic but i promise you will not be disappointed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:02:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24561265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/planetcleer/pseuds/planetcleer
Summary: In 2014, fourteen-year-old Gavin Free boards a plane headed to Los Santos from London Oxford International and effectively vanishes into thin air. The thing about vanishing, though, is that no one everreallydoes—somethingmust happen to them.In 2018, he resurfaces, bleeding out in the water of Puerta Del Sol's docks, and Burnie, his uncle, just wants to know what the hell thatsomethingwas and who the fuck is to blame for it. At the same time, a new, skilled hacker going by the name ofGolden Boycrashes into Los Santos' underground. Geoff Ramsey, leader of the Fake AH Crew and top dog of the city, gets a tip from an old friend and decides to recruit him, not expecting to meet a ghost—Gavin.Geoff has the same questions as Burnie, but he doesn't have much time to dwell on finding answers. Joel Heyman's crew is growing, becoming a real threat, and the body count starts rising.Everything is manageable until it isn't anymore.
Relationships: Jeremy Dooley/Gavin Free/Michael Jones, past Gavin Free/Joel Heyman
Comments: 19
Kudos: 33





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> hooooboy. so i originally started this fic and posted it way back in 2014. i had the basic concept of what i wanted to do but never really planned it all out, so eventually i just abandoned it. about a year or so ago, i found myself thinking about it and decided to kinda revamp the whole thing, develop a real plot, and finish the story, and now here we are!! i'll be honest i worked on it on and off but that was mostly because i don't know if there's as much of a market for this fandom as there was back then, so i know i might be shouting this into the void more or less. but this story has honestly become a labor of love and i really wanted to just post it already!
> 
> also, like i said in the tags, this was obviously started awhile before joel at least announced he had been let go, so i kept him in for the sake of not giving myself a headache. as far as i know he hasn't said anything explicitly asking not to be written in fic, but if he has, please let me know and i'll go ahead and change things!
> 
> anyway, the first two chapters are reworked from the original three that i posted, but after that everything is new :) for the time being, i'm gonna update at least every friday, but maybe twice a week if i can crank out the later chapters like i want to. i think the last thing i need to say is, for reference, gavin is about 19-20 at the "present" time of the fic. michael and jeremy are like 22-23, and then geoff, ryan, jack, burnie, and joel are all in their mid to late 30s. during the time that gavin is with joel, he's 14-18 and joel is 30-34.
> 
> i really hope you enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hooooboy. so i originally started this fic and posted it way back in 2014. i had the basic concept of what i wanted to do but never really planned it all out, so eventually i just abandoned it. about a year or so ago, i found myself thinking about it and decided to kinda revamp the whole thing, develop a real plot, and finish the story, and now here we are!! i'll be honest i worked on it on and off but that was mostly because i don't know if there's as much of a market for this fandom as there was back then, so i know i might be shouting this into the void more or less. but this story has honestly become a labor of love and i really wanted to just post it already!
> 
> also, like i said in the tags, this was obviously started awhile before joel at least announced he had been let go, so i kept him in for the sake of not giving myself a headache. as far as i know he hasn't said anything explicitly asking not to be written in fic, but if he has, please let me know and i'll go ahead and change things!
> 
> anyway, the first two chapters are reworked from the original three that i posted, but after that everything is new :) for the time being, i'm gonna update at least every friday, but maybe twice a week if i can crank out the later chapters like i want to. i think the last thing i need to say is, for reference, gavin is about 19-20 at the "present" time of the fic. michael and jeremy are like 22-23, and then geoff, ryan, jack, burnie, and joel are all in their mid to late 30s. during the time that gavin is with joel, he's 14-18 and joel is 30-34.
> 
> i really hope you enjoy!

Gavin sits on a curb, head in his hands and blood soaking through the knee of his denim jeans. The street is emptier than usual at this time of night but the city roars around him even still—bass pumping out from the club, neon signs buzzing, a sharp yelp of pain from a window somewhere above his head, a dog barking the next street over, sirens wailing faintly in the distance. South Los Santos is never truly quiet, but he likes it better that way. He raises his head, struggles to focus on the lights twinkling across the highway, further into the city, where skyscrapers rise high and the dirt and grime has more sparkle, is easier to ignore.

Lazy thoughts drift through his mind and, idly, he scratches the inside of his arm, the blunt of his nails catching on fresh track marks. He wants to be up there, he thinks, wants to cross the seemingly impossible distance that really is only a few miles of asphalt, but he knows Joel won’t allow that. Joel doesn’t even let him walk to the convenience store on the corner on his own, let alone the other side of the city. He says it isn’t safe over there. He says Gavin has to stay so he can protect him, because Lord knows he can’t take care of himself, and Gavin is too high, too drunk, too fucked out, too far gone to ever ask why they can’t just go together, why Joel can’t just protect him _there_ , too.

(—actually, he does ask, once, but he ends up with a black eye and stitches creeping across his cheekbone and it only takes a few of the pills Brandon brings him to forget the entire thing ever even happened and _damn_ , what the _bloody hell_ were those even laced with—)

Gavin blinks and suddenly his back has met the sidewalk, cold seeping in through his button up and stiffening his spine. His shirt feels dingy, vaguely uncomfortable, and he supposes he’ll have to change into a fresher one whenever he gathers the energy to get up and go back inside the club. He needs to find a different pair of pants, anyway. Joel won’t touch him until he cleans himself up—he hates the sight of blood. 

(—even when _he’s_ the one who draws it—)

But it doesn’t matter right now. Joel is locked inside his office, distracted enough by his _business meeting_ for Gavin to slip out the back for a cigarette, and as that thought enters his mind again, he gropes for the pack beside him on the curb. He pulls his torso up off the ground just enough to get an elbow under him and lights the first one that slides out into his open palm, then crashes back down on his back. Just a smoke, and he’ll head back inside; if not for the fact that someone will eventually notice he’s gone (probably Aaron, or one of the Adams, or maybe even Barbara, though _she_ probably wouldn’t tell), then because the need for a fix is just beginning to edge him towards restlessness. 

But he has some time still, and so he takes a long drag from his cigarette, content, for now, to watch the smoke curl towards the empty, black sky above him.

He knows there are stars up there somewhere, but he can’t remember now what they look like.

It’s been a long time.

—

The first time Geoff meets Gavin Free, the kid is five years old and somehow too obnoxious and too adorable at the same time. Geoff’s best friend and roommate, Burnie, just happens to be the kid’s uncle, so when he and his parents come to visit from England for the first time, it’s Geoff’s home, too, that they are welcomed into. 

(It goes unsaid between them that Burnie’s sister and her husband don’t need to know the details of their lives, what they _really_ go out and do every day. They don’t need to know just how corrupt Los Santos is, how Geoff is working on putting together a real crew, how Burnie isn’t rising through the ranks of his company so quickly by just working hard, how they each have more than just a hand in the rising crime rate. Some things are better left alone.)

Gavin and his parents visit quite a bit considering the distance and expenses—not that Geoff is necessarily complaining. Burnie reveals that his sister and their mother are the only family he has left, and that his brother-and-law is even more alone. It’s the only explanation he ever offers and Geoff duly notes the hint not to press any further. Besides, Anna and David are good people, and it’s easier than he thinks to be fond of Gavin, as exhausting as the kid’s endless curiosity and energy are. He is silly, bright, hilarious, and Geoff brags, often, about how he is _obviously_ the favorite uncle, though Gavin will never admit to anything one way or the other without being coerced through tickling.

The last time Geoff sees Gavin before his eventual disappearance, it’s the day after the kid’s tenth birthday and his parents promise to visit again soon as they climb into a taxi. They mean it sincerely, and Geoff knows that, but it’s a promise that they break once the murder rate in Los Santos becomes the highest in the country. He doesn’t really blame them.

Years pass, and eventually, Burnie becomes the head of his company, staying true to his connections and allies within the city despite their relocation to San Fierro. Geoff manages to start that crew, turns out to be damn good at running it, too, and it grows and grows like unchecked weeds in a garden. Before long, his is a household name, not in total control but make no mistake—he’s well on his way to it.

—

Gavin stands with a blindfold knotted at the back of his skull on what he thinks must be a dock. He thinks this because he can taste the salt of the sea on his lips, can feel wisps of his hair caught in the misted breeze, can hear the crash of the waves against wood and stone and the call of a seagull somewhere overhead. It strikes him as sounding lonely. Despite himself, he’s shaking, though he isn’t sure if it’s from the cold, from fear, or from the steady beating _i need i need i need i need_ flowing through his bloodstream. He’s distantly aware of the fact that he’s going to die sober.

He doesn’t much care for that idea.

“Make it quick, B. We’ve got errands to run.” It’s Joel, and the sound of his voice—

(—reminds him of lying in bed, cotton in his lungs and bruises forming on his neck and hazy pleasure weighing his bones down. It reminds him of tequila burning all the way down his throat only to crackle away like embers in the pit of his stomach, and of hands on the small of his back, on his hips, on his thighs, on his ass. It reminds him of fingers pressing into his spine and smoke curling out of an open mouth into his own and stubble against his collarbone and his head bouncing off a brick wall and how the television and the radio and their voices were just a hum in the background he could never quite be bothered enough to focus on. It reminds him of stained flannel sheets and skinned knees and poking ribs and purple veins and dirty receipts and lingering kisses and strong arms and sleep—)

—makes his heart clench, lips darting out to wet cracked lips.

Is eighteen too young for a broken heart?

Not if it isn’t too young to die.

Footsteps trail back towards proper land, and Gavin knows, stomach twisting, that Joel isn’t just abandoning him, he’s getting _rid_ of him—he’s tying up a loose end. After a long beat of silence, Brandon’s voice comes soft behind him. “I’m so sorry, Gav.”

The bullet hits him in his shoulder, all searing, blooming pain, and the next thing he registers is cold water pulling him down, sucking him in, smothering him, and then, and then—

—nothing.

—

Gavin doesn’t know the specifics of what his mother does for a living, but he knows it has something to do with a big company and computers. They own a few very expensive ones, as well as some that she built herself—and, later, as he gets older, ones he helps her build. For one reason or another, she can’t show him anything involving her actual work, but she teaches him basic coding and programming and he goes from there on his own.

Once, when he’s thirteen, Dan and Ben convince him to hack into their school’s website as a prank. He leaves pictures of dicks in the place of administrators’ faces as a personal touch, and there’s chittering all through school the following couple of days. The adults are furious. Gavin is smart, though, and he knows how to cover his tracks well enough, so no one else ever catches him.

He suspects that his mother knows, because she gives him this _look_ across the dinner table the night his school sends an email to all the parents about the incident, her eyes shimmering, but he can’t decipher what it means. She never brings it up, so neither does he, but it’s possible she just never got the chance to.

Shortly after his fourteenth birthday, his parents go out for their sixteenth anniversary and get hit by a drunk driver on the way home. His father dies on impact, neck snapped. His mother, he reads inside files he shouldn’t have access to, dies later. The airbag breaks her nose, collarbone, and one of her arms, and she suffers from a hip fracture and damage to multiple internal organs. Almost all of her ribs on her left side crack or break, some of which puncture her lung. This could have been survivable, maybe, but her body is already bleeding internally and the pressure builds up, eventually collapsing her lung as it fills with blood.

His father feels no pain before he dies. His mother’s pain is excruciating. 

The following days are spent at his grandmother’s house, with a lot of people Gavin barely knows bringing them casseroles and pies and various chicken dishes. A lot of people say sorry to him, too, and too many old ladies he’s never met before coddle and smother him until it feels like he can’t breathe.

Dan goes with him to the funeral, holds his hand as they sit beside one another in the pews and again, later, as they watch a young man shovel wet dirt and worms onto the caskets until the sleek black disappears. Not once does Gavin cry, as much as he wants to. Instead, that night, he gets into the guest bed down the hall from his nan’s room and sleeps for twenty-one hours.

When he wakes up, there’s a young woman and an older man sitting at his nan’s table, discussing what seem to be very important adult matters. 

The woman has a briefcase filled with paperwork, and says her name is Ms. Sousa, that she’s a lawyer. The man has kind eyes and bright white teeth, and says his name is Casey, that he’s with a fostering agency. The two of them are supposed to help his nan decide what is in Gavin’s best interest, or something like that, though he can’t figure out _how_. 

And there is his nan—crying, just like she has been since the policemen brought him to her house a week ago. She asks him to sit so they can talk. He sits. He talks.

“I don’t understand. Why can’t I just stay with her?” Gavin picks at a crack in the wooden table with his nail, but holds Casey’s gaze as he asks. He isn’t crying, but his head hurts and there’s pressure building behind his eyes that he can’t make go away.

“I’m not well, love,” his grandmother cuts in. She has one hand on her chest, clutching the locket resting there, and the other she lays atop Gavin’s. That hand trembles even as Gavin turns his palm up to hold it, thumb running over a prominent vein. This is his mother’s mother and somehow that makes everything worse. “You know that. I haven’t got another four years in me, and I won’t have you taking care of me while you should be focusing on school.”

Gavin’s free hand curls into a loose fist in his lap, “But - But that isn’t _fair_. Where am I supposed to go?!”

“Well, Gavin, your Uncle Burnie—” Ms. Sousa nearly stumbles over the nickname, nose wrinkling up in mild distaste, and Gavin thinks that he doesn’t really like her much at all, “—has offered to take you in.” 

The suggestion ignites red hot rage inside of him, but placing it is difficult—he remembers visiting his uncle as a child, remembers loving him, loving to see him, and he won’t deny that he misses him now, but even still... He can’t remember ever being this mad in his life.

“I absolutely will _not_ go to live with him,” his chair skitters back as he flies to his feet, voice rising dramatically, “I’m not leaving my friends, I’m not moving to America, and I’m not going to _him_.”

“Gavin,” Casey begins, voice delicate as if trying to placate a wild animal, and that serves to only anger him further, “he’s the only realistic option—”

“He wouldn’t even go to his sister’s funeral!” It sits in the air, heavy, and his nan’s breath hitches, “It’s _always_ work with him. We stopped visiting because he got too busy to see us, and now he can’t even take any bloody time off of bloody work just to bury his dead sister and her husband! He’s _not_ a realistic option.”

Ms. Sousa frowns at him, mouth set in a tight line, “Gavin, please lower your voice. Your opinion matters, but you are not the one making the final decision. We asked you what you wanted to do as a courtesy. Your uncle is your only living family member besides your grandmother, he’s quite financially stable, and he lives in a good city, in a good school district—there’s no reason why you shouldn’t go to live with him.”

Though he opens his mouth to fire back, his nan is quick to speak before he can, “Your uncle is a good man, Gavin. Your mother loved him very much, and he loved her just the same. He may not be here now, but don’t mistake that for him not caring about her, or about your father, or about me or you.”

Still, Gavin is nothing if not stubborn, “If he wanted to take me, he should have been here. I won’t. I won’t go with him.”

“It’s what your mother would have wanted,” his nan says after a long, tense moment, and it’s over from there.

Casey says it’ll be easier in the end, because if something happens to his grandmother before he graduates, he’ll just be sent to live with Burnie, anyway. It’ll be more difficult when he’s older, he’s told. Harder to adjust. Too much change.

He thinks this is too much damn change now, but what does his opinion matter? Apparently nothing.

He’s given a week. Most of that time he spends with Dan, trying to immortalize their friendship even with the knowledge that it might not last. The night before he’s due to fly across the world, leaving his entire life behind, Dan gives him one of two lumpy friendship bracelets. They tie their bracelets around their wrists and hug for a long time.

When they pull away, he thinks he sees tears in Dan’s eyes. His are still dry.

—

Gavin, albeit young and stupid, is actually quite talented, and quite difficult, and quite angsty in the way only teenagers can be. Deep down, he knows his anger towards his uncle is misguided, that he’s extremely hurt over the deaths of his parents, that he’s _rightfully_ frustrated and hurt and upset about having to lose his best friend and everything that’s familiar to him on top of it all, but again.

Difficult.

So he finds himself thinking of his Uncle Geoff, almost a memory now but a memory he trusts even so. He has no one else to put his hope in, and so very badly wants to believe that Geoff is different, that he didn’t change like Burnie did, that someone is finally, _finally_ on his side. He wants to believe it so badly, in fact, that immediately following the purchase of his ticket to San Fierro, he gets out his laptop, the only computer he had been allowed to bring from home, and decides to change his flight.

As he stashes a one-way ticket to Los Santos in his carry-on, he thinks that maybe his mother should have scolded him for hacking his school’s website, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to my true pal, summercarntspel, for all the help so far. i might not have posted this without you!


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay i know i said i would post on Fridays, and i'm still gonna stick to that as a guarantee, but i'm just super stoked to get to the next couple chapters and i have zero self discipline SO this week you're gettin more bang for your buck lmfao. they'll be longer after this one, too!

Gavin’s eyes open. He sees white, and then shapeless colors moving around, and then there’s noise, so much noise, booming into existence, roaring in his ears. He can’t make out any of it, but it doesn’t matter. His eyes flutter and close before he realizes.

That happens again, and again, and again.

The first time he opens his eyes for more than five seconds, he wishes he hadn’t. He doesn’t recognize the room he’s in, or the voices outside, or the faint smell of - of something. Chemicals maybe? Bleach? It smells sterile. Clean. He isn’t sure where he is.

His eyes focus on his right arm and the needle nestled in his skin by his elbow. It’s connected to a small tube, but he doesn’t care enough to try figuring out what the tube is, or what it goes to—drugs, _fuck_ , are those drugs? He can’t remember the last time he took anything, and the track marks on his arms look old, too old, by a least a couple of days. 

None of them are fresh, except this one, from this needle, and really, what is it that he’s taking? Of course, he takes stuff all the time without really knowing, but he still doesn’t know where he is or who he’s with and he can’t remember much and this place is strange and it isn’t _home_ and he hasn’t seen Joel yet and he’s beginning to realize that he can’t actually feel his body at all and his mind is still hazy and there’s some kind of machine nearby that’s begun screaming out of nowhere, the beeping intruding on his thoughts, and _why can’t he move his other arm_? The needle isn’t in that sweet spot in his vein and he wants to move it but his left arm isn’t doing anything he wants and that machine is so damn loud and now there’s some woman in the room and she’s yelling, too, just like the machine, and he doesn’t know what she’s doing but he can’t bring himself to think too hard on it because his vision is swimming, the edges are throbbing and shaking, and before he knows it, everything is dark again.

That’s the most clear-headed he is for a while after that. 

Sometimes he wakes and feels as if he’s just had a nightmare, his whole body sweaty and cold and shaking. It takes only moments for him to fall back to sleep.

Other times he wakes and feels as if his body is on fire. He’s never felt so much pain before, like his insides are boiling and his skin is melting and his teeth are all falling out, and he cries until that woman comes in and helps him be numb again.

Other times, still, he sees things—terrible creatures lurking just outside the window, or the door, or shadows dancing in the dim light, or cockroaches and centipedes and beetles crawling into his mouth, under his skin, or a dark figure he inexplicably _knows_ is here to hurt him creeping up to his bed, though he is somehow paralyzed and can only lay there and watch. 

And every once and awhile, his mother and father visit, sitting on either side of his bed, in the chairs beside it, standing at the foot of it and smiling down at him.

“Oh, sweetie... I’m so sorry this happened to you,” his mother murmurs once, perched on the mattress beside him as she smooths his hair. His father stands at his other side, holding his hand. He can’t manage to do anything more than stare at them, eyes glassy, but he hopes they can tell how much he loves them, and how much he wants to know what happened, what exactly they’re apologizing for.

“It’s been so long… You’ve grown up so much, Gav,” his father squeezes his hand and Gavin’s heart aches in a way he hasn’t allowed it to in quite some time, though he can’t remember why, can’t figure out what his father means. How long has it been, and since what? When was the last time he saw his parents?

Out of nowhere, the hand in his hair tightens and pulls. It stings, makes his eyes water, and he looks over to his mother with confusion, “Wh—?”

“You’ve certainly grown, Gavin. Become such a mess. What’s gotten into you?” His mother’s eyes are no longer kind, her jaw set and lips drawn into a sneer, “A whore, a slag, and for what? For a fix? Pathetic.”

“What were you even thinking?” His father moves to grab his wrist instead, squeezes hard enough to hurt, “Ah, that’s right, you probably weren’t. Always stupid, always lazy, always useless.”

“Just a disappointment, really.”

Real tears prick the corners of Gavin’s eyes and he squirms as much as he can, tries to move away, tries to ask them what’s going on and why they’re hurting him. For a moment, he flounders, looking helplessly between them, but then his eyes land on his mother again and she doesn’t look right. Even without moving to displace them, huge clumps of hair are falling from her scalp, and her skin is discolored, growing tight and dry, sinking in, quickly beginning to - beginning to rot, he realizes, cold terror twisting in his gut.

His father isn’t faring any better and they’re still both so close to him, holding him tightly as their bodies decompose. Their skin is breaking up, sloughing away in chunks, revealing oozing black blood and cracked bone beneath it and he can smell the decay then, stifling and suffocating and choking him.

“Why didn’t you try harder? Maybe you could have done something to save us,” his mother’s jaw is almost entirely disconnected from the rest of her face by then, held together only by loose joints and scraps of brownish skin.

His father drops, knees cracking as they hit the floor, and he ends up staring at Gavin over the edge of the bed with eyes sitting in rapidly deepening sockets. Another crack and his head his hanging to one side, neck bent unnaturally, sickeningly. His grip on Gavin’s wrist doesn’t loosen. “What a mistake. You hear that, Gavin? You’re a fucking mistake. Our biggest regret.”

“You’re terrible. Worthless,” his mother’s voice is starting to grow raspier. She slumps, resting now almost entirely on his body as dark, dark blood seeps from her mouth and soaks into the blanket, “We always hated you, you know. Never wanted children. Why do you think we only had you?”

After a moment, his father begins to laugh, his own jaw hanging open as he stares and stares. His mother’s hand, dead and still decaying, falls from his hair to his cheek, “Oh, Gavin. You should have died that day on the docks. We wish you had.”

Gavin screams and screams until darkness finds him once more.

—

The Fake AH Crew rules Los Santos, anyone you ask could tell you that. They’re untouchable. Immortal. They’re good at what they do; good at planning, good at hurting, good at instilling fear. They execute plans perfectly, and even when they don’t, things end up leaning in their favor, anyway. They’re always there, always watching, always waiting, always ready to strike when they need to, and always one step ahead of the cops.

Even when one of them gets caught, the very few times it’s happened, they’ve escaped or been broken out very soon after. People whisper, say that they have connections within the LSPD, connections within the hospitals, connections within the city officials.

People are right.

As a general rule, at least in the context of the dark, seedy, not-quite-so-underbelly of Los Santos, you’re either with them or you’re dead. Small crews pop up from time to time, but they either quickly affiliate themselves with the Fake AH Crew, or they disappear. It’s as simple as that.

Such is the way of Los Santos.

—

On August 12th at exactly 9:56 am, Burnie Burns receives The Call.

Well, in actuality, his _assistant_ , Miles, receives the call, then directs it to him, but that’s beside the point. He eventually picks it up himself and _that_ happens at exactly 9:56 am.

“Michael Burns speaking,” he leans one elbow against the desk, trying to figure out why the hell some hospital in Los Santos would want to speak to _him_.

“Yes, hello, Mr. Burns?” The voice on the other end is polite, professional, “Sorry to bother you. My name is Caleb, and I’m a nurse at Central Los Santos Medical Center. re you at all related to someone by the name of Gavin Free?”

Burnie’s mouth runs dry, stomach dropping and fingers nearly loosening enough for the phone to drop, as well, because he hasn’t heard that name spoken in years. Gavin Free, as in his nephew? The boy who stepped onto a plane in England and vanished four years ago, who he was supposed to protect but ultimately failed? _That_ Gavin Free?

The deaths of his older sister and her husband absolutely _wrecked_ Burnie. They had meant the world to him, and it was too damn soon, and in the end, he just couldn’t find the heart or the strength to face them. Instead, he buried himself under mountains of work, so deeply that the funeral came and went while he crashed, dead asleep, slumped over his desk in San Fierro. Of course, that left Gavin on his own when it came time to move to America with him. Alone in the airport. Alone on the flight. Alone and surely dead not long after, as much as he didn’t like to think about it.

If Gavin’s been dead this whole time, though, why would a _hospital_ be calling him now? If they found a body, wouldn’t it have been the police? Is it seriously possible that Gavin is alive? Alive and living and breathing and in the hospital, as close to him as Los Santos?

“Mr. Burns? Are you still there?”

Burnie blinks twice and then clears his throat, flustered, “I’m sorry, yes, I’m here. And yes, I’m related to Gavin. He’s my - my nephew.”

“Oh, good. You’re the only living relative we could find,” the nurse sounds relieved and Burnie thinks about his own mother who died two years ago. Indeed, he’s the only family Gavin has left.

He clears his throat again, more just to set himself back on track than anything, “Is he alright?”

The nurse hesitates, and Burnie’s blood runs cold, “Well… he’s alive, Mr. Burns, and he will most certainly survive. He’s in bad shape, however. If you wouldn’t mind coming down to the hospital, a doctor can fill you in on the rest.”

Why the man can’t just tell him now, Burnie has no clue, but he just nods even though he can’t see him, “Yeah, of course. No problem. I’ll - I can be there in an hour.”

“Alright, Mr. Burns, thank you.”

“No, thank you,” Burnie hangs up and nearly jumps from his chair, sliding his suit jacket off the back of it as he goes. He fills Miles in, very briefly, about where he’s going, asks the man to shut down his computer for him, and then practically runs out of the building.

His heart is beating loud enough in his chest that he can hear it, and he makes a promise to himself that he will never, ever let Gavin down again.

—

“Here’s what we know, Mr. Burns,” Dr. Eberle sits beside Burnie in one of Central Los Santos Medical Center’s many waiting rooms, setting her clipboard in her lap, “Gavin was found in the water, by the docks in La Puerta, bleeding from a gunshot wound to his shoulder. He hadn’t been in the water very long, so no hypothermia—just some water in his lungs, and we got that out. The surgery to remove the bullet went well.”

She pauses, considering her next words, and Burnie frowns in anticipation, “But...?”

“I’m not sure if you know this, but there is a network of nerves that sends and receives signals from the brain to the arm, called the brachial plexus. It’s located in the spine, but certain shoulder injuries can also affect it. In Gavin’s case, it was the bullet. He’s currently experiencing nerve damage and paralysis in his left arm, but, _but_ —” she emphasizes the last two words, Burnie’s rising anxiety visible, “—there’s no reason to suspect that it’s irreversible. Gavin isn’t in the right condition at the moment, but we can start him on physical therapy if it doesn’t just go away, which occasionally happens, and with that, he should regain _almost_ all, if _not_ all, of his feeling and movement in the arm.”

Burnie lets out a slow breath through his nose, scrubbing at his face with one hand, “Okay… Okay. Alright. That’s - This is doable. This is okay. Gavin can work through that.”

“Mr. Burns,” Dr. Eberle begins delicately after a moment, “There’s more.”

“More? What more can there be than that?” Burnie tries not to sound angry with her, more than aware she’s just doing her job and _helping_ , but he can’t keep the incredulous tone out of his voice no matter how hard he tries.

“When we examined him, we did find injuries sustained in some kind of fight, possibly before he was shot. Three of his ribs are bruised and another is cracked. He has some minor scarring around his body, too, and a small number of bone fractures, most of them in different stages of healing. Those probably came from type of prior physical abuse.” The doctor flips through the chart some, then continues, “As well as that, he had trace amounts of alcohol and various drugs in his system when he was brought in, and there are… track marks on the insides of his arms, sir, and other evidence of heavy drug use throughout his body that I can detail if you’d like.”

Burnie shakes his head minutely, but otherwise doesn’t respond from where he has slumped over with his head in his hands.

Her smile is sympathetic, edging on rueful, and she moves on, “The police conducted a rape kit once he got out of surgery. We _do_ believe that he has been having anal sex, but there was no evidence of injuries related specifically to fighting off an unwanted sexual encounter. Of course, that isn’t evidence enough, but we’ll have to wait until he’s awake and aware enough to ask him anything, so for now, they’ve ruled out rape.”

“Is that it, then?” Burnie doesn’t know how much more he can handle right now, which, he can admit, is _funny_ considering his usual stomach for violence and seedy activities. The worst parts of the city, its darkest secrets, its corruption, its evilness... He had been infected by it a long time ago, has come to enjoy the power he’s built, but he’s always preferred to hide that side of his life in the shadows as opposed to, for instance, Geoff’s more full immersion. 

And when Gavin was a child, he had tried so hard to hide and protect him from it all, so he would never know the truth of how terrible humanity can truly be. Now, he finds little humor in the irony that it somehow managed to drag Gavin in and consume him whole anyway. No, all Burnie finds himself with is sadness, and anger, the latter of which he’s always felt more familiar with.

“The only other thing you should know is that he’s going through withdrawals from both the alcohol and drugs right now. There’s nothing we can do to aid him through this process except make sure he doesn’t hurt himself any further, and in your case, be there to comfort him. It’s mostly been a series of… intense hallucinations, but he’s also been showing signs of anxiety, nausea, uncontrollable shaking... When he’s lucid, he’s either irritable or has a hard time concentrating.”

Burnie swallows his own nausea, “And how long will that last?”

“Because we don’t know exactly what he was addicted to yet, we don’t know for sure,” Dr. Eberle offers him another smile, apologetic, and this one he catches, though it doesn’t make him feel much better, “But they found multiple different compounds that they’re testing, and on top of his alcohol use, I think it’s likely we’ll see lasting symptoms anywhere from two weeks to a month. 

“Now, we haven’t been able to give him very large doses of any painkillers because we’re afraid his body may latch onto them during this withdrawal period, but we’ve given him enough to help him get some rest, so he isn’t aware of any pain most of the time. He might not be very responsive for a while, but as the withdrawals begin to subside, he’ll be more clear-headed.”

The information is almost too much to have gotten all at once, but Burnie reminds himself that he _is_ the CEO of a major company, after all, and has his fingers in more pies than he can count. He’s used to handling catastrophes. He can do this. After taking a moment to catalogue it all, his jaw tightens as he nods, “At least he’s alive. Thank you for everything you’re doing for him.”

“Of course, Mr. Burns,” Dr. Eberle smiles again, sympathetically, and pats his shoulder, “If you’re ready, you can go see him. He should be asleep right now.”

Burnie takes in a slow breath and then stands, schooling his features. Whether Gavin is awake or not, whether he’s even aware of his surroundings or not, Burnie has to be there for him. He has to be strong. He has no idea who Gavin is anymore, has no idea what he’s going to act like, what he’s been through, the type of person he’s become, but if nothing else, he just has to let Gavin know that it’s _okay_.

It _has_ to be okay.

“I’m ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edit: i changed the month of the call from november to august!! sorry y'all, that slipped through my editing eyes :O


	3. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pls do not talk to me abt burnie's announcement i am already crying!!! anyway this is where things start to get a lil more interesting so enjoy :')

“Hey, kid,” Burnie greets, his smile edging on delicate as Gavin slides into the passenger seat, “How was PT?”

“Good,” Gavin replies, and says nothing more. Instead, he busies himself with buckling up and squishing his backpack further into the footwell until his gangly legs fit comfortably. 

It’s been a month and a half since they let Gavin out of the hospital, and the tension is certainly lighter—at least he’s actually speaking to him now—but Burnie isn’t exactly holding his breath for a ‘World’s Best Uncle’ mug any time soon. With a soft sigh, he shifts back into drive and pulls away from the curb.

The drive is silent, save for the radio playing the same Top 40 songs over and over again, and he does his best to keep his eyes on the road. Gavin had snapped at him once, early on, for staring at him too often (“You don’t need to coddle me, Burnie, I’m not a damn child!”), but while he completely respects the space the kid needs, it’s hard to fight his desire to continuously check up on him, just to make sure he’s really still there, still safe, still _alive_.

Gavin, for his part, just stares out the window at San Fierro’s passing scenery, idly squeezing and unsqueezing a foam ball in his left hand. The physical therapist mentioned it’s supposed to help tone his muscles, but Burnie’s fairly certain it's become a nervous tic, too. The thought at least makes him feel better about his own fraying nerves.

After making the ascent into the hills where he lives, Burnie carries Gavin’s bag and the dinner that they had stopped for on the way inside the front door. As he moves into the kitchen, he can hear Gavin trailing into the front hall behind him, cooing for the cat already, “Joe! Joey! Where are you, sweet boy?”

When Burnie turns around a few minutes later, two plates of food in hand, Gavin has appeared in the doorway to the kitchen with an armful of purring orange tabby, “I’ve found him.” 

“Nicely done, he’s an elusive one,” Burnie hesitates, surprised, as he watches his nephew take a seat at the island, though he covers it up with his usual grin in an instant. Gavin is at his quietest following physical therapy, seeming even more detached than normal, and chooses to eat dinner alone in his room more often than not, so this is certainly _different_. Afraid of scaring him off, Burnie sets down both plates, takes a seat beside him, and tries to act as if everything is totally and completely normal. 

As they dig in, Joe the Cat curls up in Gavin’s lap, content, and for awhile the only sounds are his purring and silverware scraping against their plates. 

“Hey, Gav?” Burnie starts eventually, once they’ve both finished and he’s stood at the sink rinsing off their dishes. He thought it over all throughout dinner and, feeling emboldened by the slight progress between them, decided that maybe it’s time to ask about what’s been eating away at him ever since he answered that damn phone call. What harm can a simple question really do?

Gavin offers nothing more than a quiet, questioning hum in response, and so he continues, as casually as he can manage, as he scrubs circles into one of the plates, “I was just wondering if you’re ready to talk about what happened.”

“You mean at physical therapy...?” Gavin questions after a long moment, though he knows exactly what his uncle is trying to get at, and he knows his uncle knows that, too.

“No,” Burnie clears his throat, “I mean what happened before the hospital. What happened after your… after your flight, when I was supposed to pick you up. What happened in between. Where have you been? What happened to you?” He counts to five. No answer. He lets out a long, slow breath and twists the knob to turn the water off, gathering his courage before turning around to meet Gavin’s hard, unreadable gaze.

The silence, while never particularly pleasant, is overwhelming, almost suffocating now, and he can’t help but think of Gavin as a child; excitable and energetic, talkative and expressive, loud and crazy and hyper and impossible to shut up. He can’t help but think of Gavin now; emotionless and quiet, guarded and tense, silent and muted and exhausted and impossibly different. He can’t help but think that these past four years have been very, very long.

“Please, Gavin,” he can’t bear it any longer, and so he reaches out as he takes one step closer to the island, deflating at the way the boy flinches, “Please, I... I just want to know what happened to you. I just want to understand.”

“You wouldn’t.” 

Joe the Cat, perhaps sensing Gavin’s change in mood, hops to the ground and stretches lazily, and desperately, Burnie presses on, “Look, I’m sorry I let you down before. I don’t know what happened, but I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I wish more than anything I had been and I’ve regretted it every day since. I just want to be here for you _now_. Just let me _try_ —”

“You _wouldn’t understand_.” Gavin’s tone is dark now, firm and final, as he stands, “Goodnight, Burnie.” 

As a door slams shut upstairs, Burnie’s body sags against the counter, silence enveloping him once more. Joe the Cat eyes him, almost accusatory, from across the kitchen, tail swishing, and he sighs, “Yeah, yeah, I know. Maybe you should try next time.” 

Of course, there won’t be a next time after _that_ mess. Gavin will either be ready to talk about it eventually or he won’t be, and Burnie’s starting to feel like he needs to resign himself to never getting the answers he’s looking for.

It isn’t until later that night, as he’s staring at his bedroom wall, waiting for the nightmares he knows will eventually come screaming down the hall, that he thinks if Gavin only knew the truth about him and his work, he would realize Burnie may be one of the only people who _would_ understand. 

But maybe that’s a conversation for another day.

—

Incredibly, after that night, Gavin starts to warm up to him rather than regressing further back behind his little wall—of course, the wall is definitely still _there_ , and clearly not going anywhere soon, but Burnie thinks, privately, that part of the little boy he remembers is in there somewhere, and it gives him a sliver of hope. Gavin comes down for breakfast the next morning, bleary-eyed and spacey, and then again for lunch, and for dinner after physical therapy, and that becomes their routine. 

One night, after dinner, Gavin lingers in the kitchen to take over the dishwashing role, insisting he needs to build up his hand’s strength. Burnie thinks it may be a thinly-veiled excuse for something else, as he had done not so long ago, so he lingers, too, and dries the dishes as Gavin hands them over. It isn’t until he’s making his way out of the kitchen, having waited long enough that he can’t find anything else to do, that the kid speaks, “Hey, d’you wanna play a few rounds of Halo?”

Burnie turns on the spot, the only tell of his well-controlled elation being the way his mouth turns up at one corner, “You mean, do I want to kick your ass in a few rounds of Halo? Fuck yeah, I do.”

In an instant, Gavin’s face lights up, and he whoops and hollers as he bounds ahead of Burnie and out of the room. They play until two in the morning, until Burnie, yawning practically every other second, insists on going to bed because he _is_ still working from home every day, and so they part at the top of the stairs with mumbled ‘g’night’s and joint-cracking stretches. For the first time since waking up in the hospital, Gavin’s sleep is dreamless. 

The nightmares don’t completely go away—one bonding session with his uncle, unfortunately, doesn’t magically fix things—but he no longer wakes to them every night. They start having movie marathons, binging Netflix or Hulu, playing through all the games he had missed out on, and on those nights, when he falls like a log into bed or dozes off slumped against Burnie on the couch with Joe the Cat purring between them, the nightmares that _do_ come aren’t quite so bad.

At the beginning of December, Burnie starts going back into work semi-regularly, save for the now only two afternoons a week he drives Gavin to physical therapy. This leaves Gavin with nothing but time on his hands, but something about the quiet feels _different_ when he knows he’s completely alone. 

(— _do you like the place? It’s just you and me up here, sweetheart_ —)

He distracts himself for as long as he can with movies and television and books and games, but there’s only so much content he can consume in one day, so it usually isn’t long before he’s exhausted his attention span and his mind begins wandering. Some days, when the walls particularly threaten to close in on him, he throws on a jumper and flees the house just as quick as he can. 

As hard as he tries, though, he can’t always escape his thoughts, and he can’t control how often they find Joel, thinking on him again and again and again. He had refused any therapy beyond what he needed for his hand and the handful of required substance abuse sessions before he left the hospital, because quite honestly, he has no intention of ever telling _anyone_ about what happened to him. About what Joel _did_ to him.

(— _now doesn’t that feel good? You want me to do it again? Let me hear you say it, baby_ —)

Even in the privacy of his own head, Gavin has trouble accepting it. For so long, he had _loved_ Joel, and he wonders with a sick twist of his stomach if he still does. He just isn’t _sure_. One hour, the inside of his head feels fuzzy with television static, and the next, it’s as hopelessly tangled as the mess of wires and cords behind the entertainment center. Occasionally, on a day that Burnie works and is gone long before he would typically emerge from his room, he feels stuck to his bed, a cold numbness overtaking him, and he will lay there all day until his uncle calls him for dinner.

(— _just try this, trust me, it’ll make you feel really, really good_ —)

True rage hits him out of the blue so hard he momentarily goes blind with it, smashing his bowl of cereal against the wall on a foggy Saturday morning. Burnie is home and comes running at the sound, finds him standing in the living room, his whole body trembling. He takes Gavin’s fists in his hands, uncurls his fingers enough to grasp them with his own, and says, “I’ve got two cupboards full of stuff like that, but you wanna go do this outside?”

(— _you stay away from him, Gavin, do you fucking hear me? If I ever catch that stupid shit talking to you again, you’ll both regret it_ —)

He destroys an entire set of his uncle’s dishes before that voice goes away, cheeks ruddy and voice hoarse from screaming. As the last glass shatters, his knees fold under him and he falls forward onto his hands, digging his fingers down into the soil. “I hate you,” he murmurs to the grass, knowing his anger is tucking itself away only to bubble and fester in secret, “I hate you, I hate you, I _hate_ you.”

After the last of it bleeds away, leaving him in an odd state of almost floating, he climbs to his feet and accepts the steaming mug of tea Burnie offers him inside the door with a vacant smile, “Thanks.”

“No problem-o, Gavino.” Burnie backs away to give him some space, intent on busying himself in his home office with “paperwork”, which really means pulling his hair out wondering what the hell is wrong with his nephew, but Gavin makes a noise in the back of his throat as if he’s about to speak and so he pauses.

“I think I know what I want for Christmas,” Gavin sips at his tea, seeming unfazed by his own extreme jump in topics, and finally looks up at Burnie as if just now realizing he’s standing there, “A laptop, just to pass the time. I feel like I’m going bloody mental sitting here all day, Uncle B.”

Burnie studies him for a beat, then shrugs one shoulder, palm tipping up in a vague gesture of acceptance even as he jabs, “Sounds easy enough. I’ll pass it on to Santa.”

“Thirty-seven’s a little old to believe in Santa, in’nit?” Gavin flashes him a grin as he turns to the hall, and there’s definitely still something _off_ about it, but Burnie won’t look this gift horse in its mouth, “I’m gonna go lay down for awhile.”

“Alright. I’ll be in my office if you need anything,” Burnie calls after him, staring at the end of the hall for minutes before he can bring himself to move. 

When Monday morning rolls around, a brand new, _expensive_ laptop waits for Gavin on the kitchen table. In his uncle’s handwriting, the note stuck to it reads ‘ _Happy Early Christmas, Gav! - Santa Claus_ ’. He can’t help his smile.

—

Apparently, even very old habits die hard.

Gavin isn’t quite sure _how_ he makes his way back into hacking, but regardless, it returns to him as easily as riding a bike and as naturally as breathing. At first, he picks up an odd, relatively harmless job here or there—exposing cheaters, unearthing suspected gambling problems, deleting the occasional mistakenly sent email. He refuses to meet anyone face to face, instead communicating online and introducing himself simply as ‘Dave’ (so sue him for the lack of creativity, it had been the only thing his brain supplied him with on his first job). It feels almost therapeutic to have purpose again, to be able to throw himself into his work, to distract his hands and the looming darkness in his mind, even if he has to juggle his time and listen for his uncle’s footsteps up the hallway.

His physical therapy ends as spring blossoms, and Burnie rewards him with a desktop computer for his room and _driving lessons_ (Burnie avoids making the glaring joke, asking the obvious question about how old he is, just _now_ learning, and he’s well-meaning but painfully transparent). They celebrate his nineteenth birthday at the precipice of summer with a few of his uncle’s coworkers-turned-mutual friends and an ice cream cake, and he works hard in secret all the while, opening his email at one point to find the biggest offer he’s been given yet. 

A crew from San Fierro, more or less a glorified group of four mismatched criminal fiends, need his help to pull a hit on a corrupt local politician. They give him an impossibly short deadline, and he tells them as much, but he manages to get the work done, anyway, after days spent bent over his laptop behind the closed door to his room. He does a bit of digging, swaps some information, shuts down the mark’s home security system, reroutes a decoy call to the police to lure them away, and a supposedly bad man is assassinated. 

His mind races as he stares at the ceiling that night. He didn’t pull the trigger, no, but his fingers had practically loaded the gun and cocked it. The only real problem? He doesn’t feel as bad as he thinks he should. Somehow, it feels _familiar_. 

The next morning, he receives a wire transfer into the account he opened just for this. In the email that follows, the ringleader calls him _Golden Boy_ and it sticks.

Before long, the jobs are rolling in faster than he can take them as his name and reputation pick up steam. He buys himself a second phone to make things easier, fields emails and messages that come from as far as Los Santos, even Las Venturas. He tries to stick to the ones where no one is supposed to get hurt, or the ones where the people who get hurt are guys like Joel, convincing himself it’s the right thing to do, but as the months wear on, the lines that barely existed in the first place begin to blur. 

On the one year anniversary of the day he was left for dead, Gavin stands with his back to the mirror in his bathroom, torso twisted so he can see over his shoulder. He crooks his arm back, runs the pads of his first two fingers over the bumpy, angry-looking scar, then along the lines of older ones that mark his body at random, turning to follow them as they wrap around to his front. Eventually, his gaze rises to meet his reflection’s and he stares—he stares as hard as he possibly can at the face of a man who enjoys knowing he’s helped end lives.

 _It isn’t your fault_ , he tells himself, and turns away from his own sneer, _It isn’t your fault what he made you_.

(— _oh, but isn’t it, sweetheart?_ —)

—

Gavin wakes in a cold sweat, panting heavily, his heart pounding through his chest. He gasps in a large breath and sits up, wiping damp curls of hair out of his eyes. The clock beside his bed tells him it’s four-oh-seven in the morning and he groans, scrubs his hands over his face. His throat is fucking _parched_.

After untangling his legs from his top sheet, he swings them over the side of his mattress and lets a sigh fall from his lips as his toes press against the cool, wooden floor. He waits for his heart rate to slow to a more normal, human pace before making his way through the darkened house to the kitchen downstairs. 

He putters around as quietly as he can manage, chugging an entire glass of water and nearly three-quarters of another as he leans back against the counter. That seems to do the trick. As he sips the last of it, he drinks in the silence, as well, glances out the window to the sleeping city around them, mind wandering idly.

It’s then that he hears someone speaking somewhere else in the house. It’s muffled, far away, and he catches nothing but the lower intones of a male voice, but he _knows_ it belongs to Burnie. Carefully setting his glass in the sink, he creeps out of the kitchen, past the stairs to where the hallway bends, and peeks around the corner. Under his uncle’s office door is a strip of light, and his voice is clearer now, though he still can’t make out any specific words.

Curiosity gets the better of him, because what the fuck is Burnie doing up this early on the phone, and so instead of heading back to his room like he _knows_ he should, he tiptoes closer and closer until his ear is nearly pressed against the door. He won’t go that far, has watched enough movies to know how it ends, but it doesn’t really matter because he can hear plenty from a foot or so away. 

“No, I think _you’re_ not hearing _me_ out, Gus,” Burnie sounds mildly irritated, and this close, Gavin can see the faintest bit of his shadow pacing back and forth. He misses part of what he says next, but the shadow moves back towards the door and his voice becomes clear again, “I mean, _fuck_ , how good is this guy?”

Making out any of what the tinny voice on the other end says is a lost cause, but Gavin braves a step closer, anyway, able to catch the quiet listening sounds Burnie makes. A hum here, an ‘uh huh’ there, and he pictures him just feet away, carding his fingers through his hair as he sighs audibly, “ _So_ we keep an eye on h—… Because we don’t need more to worry about right now! Do you even hear yourself, man?” 

Another pause, and Burnie moves away from the door again, grumbling something about how he is _not_ going fucking _soft_ , thank you very much, Gus, he’s just being _logical_. This would be a great time for Gavin to make his escape back to his room, but his legs are paralyzed, and in fact, he leans in even closer to the door, holding his breath. Something interesting is about to happen, he can almost _feel_ the change in the air, and he’ll be damned if he isn’t going to find out _what_.

“So we keep an eye on him,” Burnie says again, firmly, wheeling back around, “Jesus, Gus, we can cross that bridge when we get to it. _If_ we ever get to it. A year ago, this guy didn’t even exist, right? So let’s just give it some time, see what he does. I want to see what this Golden Boy is capable of before I make any decisions.”

Gavin’s heart nearly stops, whole body running ice cold, and he takes several steps back from the door before his brain processes that his feet have even come free from the ground, because _what the hell_? There’s no way. There’s just _no way_. He’s been _careful_ , he knows that. He works while Burnie is gone, in the middle of the night—when he has to, he locks himself inside of his room with the excuse of needing some time alone, and Burnie _respects_ that, doesn’t even come down the hall to call him for lunch or ask if he wants to run errands with him. He hasn’t even spent a dime of his money yet outside of his phone, which he keeps hidden, knowing he has no good answer to the question of where it’s all coming from, so no, no, his uncle can’t possibly know the truth, he’s been making sure of that.

But Burnie obviously _does_ know Golden Boy, the hacker, and it finally clicks in Gavin’s head, all but slapping him across the face. Most of his business comes from known criminals and degenerates, like the people he used to see around the club, around that neighborhood, but the occasional email comes in from a throwaway account, giving him exclusively need-to-know information, using initials instead of names as if he’s too dumb to put two and two together. Those usually come from city officials, politicians, _businessmen_ , and while he knows for sure he hasn’t ever gotten involved with Burnie’s company, he finds himself wondering if he _could_ have. 

Gavin stares at the office door, sick wonderment filling him up like a balloon, but Burnie’s voice, closer than ever and clearly wrapping up the call, finally shatters his trance. Before he can be caught, he slinks back down the hall and scrambles up the stairs to the safety of his room.

The last of his uncle’s words he was able to catch ring through his ears as he settles back into bed, mind alive and wild with thoughts. _Don’t worry about it_ , Burnie had said into the receiver, probably standing _just_ on the other side of that stupid door, _I’ll talk to Geoff_.

It looks like he has some digging to do.

—

This is how, two days later, he stumbles upon the Fake AH Crew and a one Geoffrey Ramsey living in Los Santos. As it turns out, neither of his uncles are quite as clean as he previously thought, but the more he mulls it over, the more he finds that he doesn’t really care. How can he, really? In truth, it’s almost _funny_. All those years, and all he had to do was knock on the door of a fucking master penthouse apartment uptown. 

(—only a few miles of asphalt—)

As he clicks through the LSPD’s rather unspecific files on each of the crew’s members, a memory niggles its way up from the deep recesses of his mind. Joel kept him separate from his business, but if he thought Gavin wouldn’t pick up bits and pieces of it, he had been sorely, sorely mistaken. The Fakes were, possibly still _are_ , the biggest threat to Joel’s hold on South Los Santos and, _in fact_ , are the reason he lost both Strawberry and Chamberlain Hills in the span of a year. He can remember, as if it were yesterday, Joel’s absolute _fury_ with them, how he had been as dangerous as a live wire for days. 

It hadn’t mattered to Gavin then, because he had no way of knowing _the_ Geoff Ramsey was their leader, but present day, right now? Right now his freelance work is starting to seem boring, and he decides that maybe he should look for something a little more _stable_.

“Alright,” he says to no one and cracks his knuckles, opening up his inbox with a pleased little grin, “I’ll make you notice me, Geoffrey.”


	4. Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which gavin meets the fakes. i'm super stoked for you guys to read this one :')

Impressing the top crime boss in all of Los Santos turns out to be easier said than done, or at least _takes_ significantly longer than Gavin anticipates. He digs as much as he can into the Fake AH Crew, watching grainy surveillance video after grainy surveillance video, following trails as far as he can before they disappear, listening to the ten-second audio clip of two of their voices that some kid caught on his walkie-talkie frequency as they zipped past his house on the run from the cops over and over until they sound as familiar as friends. He even hand-picks the jobs he takes on and is careful to do his research beforehand—nothing that hurts the Fakes’ empire, anything that hurts their rivals, and whatever piques his interest in between. 

And yet, months go by before his hard work pays off. Months of being _careful_ , of balancing his time between hours of slamming down Red Bulls bent over his computer while alone and acting like any other completely _normal_ trauma survivor when anyone could be watching. Months of hanging out with his uncle and their friends between jobs, wondering what’s going on inside of their heads; which of them, if any, have heard the name Golden Boy and are completely oblivious to the fact that they might be sitting right next to him.

He thinks that now as passes a plate stacked with burgers between Kerry and Ashley, seated across from Miles and Jon, flanked by Burnie and Gus on either end of the table. For awhile now, they’ve gotten together a couple times a month for a proper dinner, and tonight, he’s been helping Burnie cook and host. It’s nice to have regular human contact, to have more _noise_ in the house, but despite himself, Gavin still doesn’t quite feel like he’s found _family_ outside of his uncle. He feels more like a puzzle piece that’s in the wrong box, been forced to fit where it doesn’t, close enough but not an _exact_ match.

 _Maybe I won’t really fit anywhere ever again_ , the voice in his head intrudes out of nowhere, catching him off guard. _Maybe_ he _was my puzzle. Or maybe he broke me_. 

The inside of his jacket pocket vibrates and he blinks, his thoughts dispersing. The cellphone his uncle had gifted him well over a year ago sits in his room upstairs, considering almost anyone mostly normal who might want to talk to him is in this room, so he knows it must be work-related, but something in his gut tells him this message is especially important. He just doesn’t dare check it _now_.

Instead, he tunes back into the conversations around him—Miles and Kerry bickering, Jon and Gus discussing something or other business related and boring, Burnie flirting with Ashley with as much subtlety as a bull in a china shop—and continues eating, laughing, squabbling playfully when expected, playing his part and playing it well. If he escapes to the bathroom now, he’ll be distracted the rest of the night for nothing, unable to do anything until everyone goes home, anyway. And eventually, they will, and he’ll excuse himself to his room for an early night—Burnie understands socializing can be _draining_ for him sometimes. 

The second Gavin closes his bedroom door a couple hours later, he tears his jacket off, rifling through it for his work phone. A straight-to-the-point message from an unknown sender waits for him as he flops down into the chair at his desk; a simple set of directions along with a date and a time. Something close to crazed excitement bubbles up inside of him and he begins to laugh. 

It doesn’t matter if there’s no number attached, no name signing off—he knows, with absolute certainty, who the text is from, and _damn_ , does it feel good to be noticed.

—

“I think I’m gonna go job hunting today,” Gavin says conversationally over a plate of Burnie’s infamous Sunday brunch pancakes, cheek resting against his open palm. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Burnie raises his head to stare at him, coffee still steadily pouring from the carafe into his mug. While he isn’t looking, it overflows, splashing over the sides onto his hand, and as he jumps to set both mug and pot down, he swears sharply, “ _Shit_ , ouch!” 

Gavin snorts around a forkful and gulps it down, wanting to take pity on his uncle but unable to keep from wisecracking, “Think you spilled something”

“Can it, kid,” Burnie glowers at him from where he stands rinsing his hand under cool water, but it’s far from his best and they both know it. Within seconds, as if to prove it, his face breaks into a fond grin and he rolls his eyes, “You’re starting to sound too much like me. Now what was that about job hunting?”

“Just thought it’d be nice to get out of the house, make my own money,” Gavin can feel his own smile fading slowly, wonders how visibly he’s drawing back into himself. Not wanting to give anything away, he huffs out a gentle laugh and shrugs one shoulder, “I’m almost twenty. I can’t live here _forever_.”

“Your birthday’s not for a few months, Gav,” Burnie corrects, and though he doesn’t seem to be objecting, he offers no other insight into his thoughts for an impossibly long couple of minutes. Gavin waits patiently at the table as he dries his hand off, as he fixes his coffee up properly, until he comes to finally join him. “Are you trying to tell me you want to move out?”

“ _No_ , ‘course not… Well, _eventually_ , yeah, but not right now, idiot. That wasn’t the point.” Gavin polishes off the last of his syrup-drenched mess and watches the way his uncle watches him. It isn’t like Burnie can tell him ‘no’, exactly—he may be only nineteen but that still makes him an adult, still means he can do what he wants. The biggest difference in Burnie’s support is whether or not he drives himself around today or has to Uber.

Burnie knows it, too, even if he won’t admit it, “Y’know, if you want, you can come work with me. Doesn’t even have to be _with me_ with me, I know you’re probably sick and tired of seeing my face all the time.”

That draws another laugh from Gavin, and he’s grateful for the time it lends him to come up with a better reason to turn down the offer than _no thanks, Uncle B, I’m really gunning for this full-time criminal position with an old friend of yours, wish you could see me nail the interview today!_ “Thanks, but I don’t really wanna be _the boss’ nephew_ ,” he answers at last, smiling wryly, “I think I’d suffocate under all that paperwork, anyway. I wanna do something a little different.”

“Fair enough,” Burnie concedes as he rises to his feet again, steaming mug in hand, and that seems to be that, “Go ahead and take one of the cars. Are you gonna be home for dinner?”

“Maybe,” Gavin hesitates just long enough to be noticeable, forcing his hand into lying through his teeth as innocently as he can, “I’ve got a friend who’s just moved in nearby, so I thought I’d go hang out with him later. I dunno what the plan is yet exactly.”

Sometimes he swears Burnie must think he’s his father—the way he stops only steps away from the table and turns to furrow his brow simply reinforces the thought, “A friend, huh?”

Reading between the lines of that isn’t difficult, and as his fingers drum an inconsistent pattern across the table, nails clicking, he shakes his head, answers with a tightness, “No one from before, I promise. Christ, Uncle B, I’ll be _fine_.” 

Okay, he can admit he knows Burnie _cares_ about him, and that it should make him feel _good_ , but each time his uncle pries, all he feels is an uncomfortable pressure at the base of his skull. The longer he talks, the more questions he asks, the louder that steady drone of static inside Gavin’s head becomes until it threatens to drown them both out, and that irritates him. More accurately, it _pisses him off_. He doesn’t remember harbouring anger like this before, at least not since his nan decided to send him to America in the first place, and he certainly knows it isn’t justified, but in the moment, he reverts to a child throwing a tantrum—resentful, indignant, so much so that he can’t see past his own pain.

“I know, Gav,” Burnie replies, soft, and almost looks like he wants to reach out and squeeze his nephew’s shoulder, maybe clap him on the back. If he _does_ , he must think better of it, because he backs towards the hallway a beat later with a smile, “Be safe, alright? And good luck today. I’m excited to hear about it later.”

Gavin is left alone in the kitchen, his mind quiet again but far from silent. He can’t honestly be sure that the lie went over well, but Burnie doesn’t return to accuse him of anything, so he’s probably just projecting. Anyway, stress is the last thing he needs today, because _today_ is the day he becomes one of the Fakes.

With that thought in mind, he breezes through cleaning up and back upstairs to get himself ready. The ferry ride out to Los Santos takes a considerable amount of time, after all, on top of the drive to _wherever_ out in Blaine County. An hour later, he kisses Joe the Cat between his ears, yells a goodbye down the hall to Burnie, and climbs into a bright white Infernus in the garage.

 _Oh no, I can’t slow down, I can’t hold back, though you know I wish I could_ , Matt Schultz’s voice booms from the radio as he starts up the engine, rolls out into the sun and down the long circle drive, _Oh no, there ain’t no rest for the wicked until we close our eyes for good_.

—

Gavin can’t say what he expected returning to Los Santos to be like, but regardless, he dreams of the city so often that seeing it again feels surreal, almost as though he had never left in the first place. At least, not _completely_. Somehow, it seems like both hours and decades have passed since he last saw it fading into the distance from the helicopter, Burnie’s attempts at conversation falling on deaf ears. 

(And you know, the helicopter, explained away as belonging to Burnie’s company, had seemed distinctly _odd_ to him then, but he hadn’t been in the mood to ask, eventually forgot about it completely. How he didn’t make the connection with Burnie sooner is _beyond_ him—what normal guy takes his helicopter to pick his nephew up from the hospital? Better yet, what normal guy is allowed to casually land on a hospital’s helipad? Shouldn’t that be _illegal_?)

He isn’t as familiar with this side of town, but he probably would’ve had to use a GPS, anyway, even if he was. It occurs to him that this is the first time he’s ever driven these streets himself, and the first time in quite awhile that he’s been sober enough to pay any sort of attention to where he’s going. Shaking the thought away, he glances down at his projected ETA and frowns, finding he has significantly more time on his hands than it’ll take to get to his meeting. Maybe an overeager miscalculation on his part, but when his first thought to kill the time is to drive far out of his way to Caboose, just to see what he sees, he isn’t so sure that it hadn’t been a conscious decision. 

(— _you’re_ always _gonna be mine, sweetheart_ —)

Not that it matters, because he decides against it almost immediately. Nothing good can come out of seeing the club right now, _least_ of all seeing Joel, and so Gavin makes a left at the next intersection at his phone’s direction, eventually following Route 1 north. He’ll stop somewhere upstate to eat and pass the time, once his nerves die down again. 

That sounds like a safer plan.

He winds up pulling off the highway in Chumash, figuring it’s as good a place as any to waste a decent amount of time. His mother and father used to bring him up here as a child, setting aside one day of each trip to visit Burnie and Geoff just for the purpose of wandering down the pier, buying more cheap souvenirs, splashing through the tide as it poured in and receded back down the sand. He starts at The Barracuda Cafe—that had been his favorite, because they have tables right out on the beach, and his parents never minded waiting longer for one.

The town, as a whole, is less impressive than he remembers. Smaller, too. He lingers at the table after finishing his meal for as long as possible, but once he’s forced to move, he doesn’t have many options outside of window shopping at either of the _two_ surf shops and walking the length of the pier. Something about the idea of standing over the ocean, hearing the waves crash up close, feeling the spray in the breeze, doesn’t sit well with him, and so he decides to hit the shops first.

He manages to waste an hour or so just strolling up and down the endless aisles of tacky, brightly colored, occasionally offensive souvenirs before finding a keychain that says _Gavin_. Remembering how impossible it had been to find _anything_ with his name on it when he used to go on vacations with his parents, he plucks it off of the rack with a pleased sort of smile and, without really thinking, scans through the rest of the Gs until he finds a _Geoff_. He imagines it must be equally tough to find Geoff keychains, so he takes one of those, too, slipping them both into his pockets and continuing on casually through the store. The cashier doesn’t notice. 

Feeling brave, he swipes a pair of flashy gold sunglasses on his way out while she’s preoccupied with her phone, slipping them over his nose as he ducks out into the sunshine. The pier seems less intimidating to him now, and he walks up and down it three times, people watching and soaking up the warmth, before finally trekking back to his car. 

The meeting point is just half an hour’s drive away, but Gavin makes it in twenty, nearly bursting by now with the anticipation and eagerness he’s been controlling all day. He supposes he still isn’t _completely_ sure that the Fake AH Crew is who awaits him, but he can’t shake the feeling that his life is about to change, and it’s the first ounce of positivity he’s had in awhile.

He follows a dirt road to where it ends at a clearly-abandoned industrial park, if it can even be called _that_. It’s mostly a collection of a few warehouses and buildings, standing alone in the middle of the desert, and he parks in front of the closest one, scanning each for any sign of life. 

Around the back of one of the warehouses, he spots the front end of an armored Kuruma—one that he recognizes from days of pouring over those damn surveillance videos—and that alone confirms his suspicions. He can’t help but smile. Unless he makes trouble for himself somehow, he isn’t running blindly into any danger today. With a deep breath, he squares his shoulders and climbs out of the car. 

Four men and one woman stand in the middle of the empty warehouse, and all certainly seem taken aback as he breezes through the door less than a minute later as if he owns the place. “Good news!” He grins with almost wild abandon, leaving no room for any of them to speak as he launches into his announcement, “I’m your new hacker. _Lovely_ to meet you. Thought maybe you’d bring me to the base or something, but this is too obvious… Unless it’s _underground_. With a secret elevator like in those spy movies, or somethin’? That would be _top_ , actually.”

He pops his sunglasses up onto his head, pauses, and recognizes Geoff Ramsey just _looking_ at him. Seeing his face causes buried memories to hit Gavin out of the blue, like an eighteen-wheeler barreling down the freeway, and the rest of his words are lost, so he just looks back, grin slowly fading. After a moment, he says quietly, barely more than a whisper, “Hello, Geoffrey.” 

The tension in Geoff’s shoulders melts away visibly at his words, and Michael, who has been switching between glaring at the fucking _kid_ and staring at Geoff expectantly along with the others, scowls, “What the fuck?”

But Geoff keeps his eyes on the boy, who’s all sharp bones and tanned skin and has a look in his eyes that is miles and miles long, and before he knows it, he’s crossed the distance between them to fold him into his arms, “Gavin... Holy shit, _Gavin_!”

“Hello, Geoffrey,” Gavin repeats, and he can’t help but smile with his face squashed into Geoff’s shoulder like it is, with Geoff now letting out that squeaky, breathless laughter he remembers. They hug for ages and eventually he starts laughing, too—clear, and bright, and goofy, and for the first time in a very, very long while, wholly and completely genuine. It would be startling if he weren’t so overwhelmed by the moment.

Geoff holds him out at arm's length after finally pulling away, looks him over properly—Gavin’s got a scar along his cheekbone and stubble where there never was before, and his hair is darker than he remembers. He’s still fairly baby-faced, though, and looks remarkably _young_ standing there in a button up that hangs off his thin frame, but more than anything, he just looks _exhausted_.

He almost can’t believe that this kid, the kid he and Burnie used to play fucking _hide and seek_ with, is really the infamous _Golden Boy_ , but there’s just no other explanation to how he could wind up standing here before him. It occurs to him suddenly that Burnie must not have any clue, but he files that worry away for later because fuck everything else, he’s just glad to see Gavin alive and in one piece. 

“You look like dicks, kid,” he finally settles on, not unkindly, as he ruffles Gavin’s hair. 

The squawk of indignation it earns him is pleasantly familiar, but Michael cuts in before anything more can be said, “Okay, what the _fuck_?” 

Geoff finds each member of the crew staring at them with equal parts suspicion and confusion, and he offers them a reassuring, easy smile in return, “Guys, meet Gavin. He’s our new hacker.” Practically watching the questions form in their heads, he adds, “I trust him. He was like my nephew when he was a kid, but it’s… been awhile.” He and Gavin share a brief look, apparently, _thankfully_ , on the same page about how much to reveal.

“Oh, you poor thing,” Jack cracks first, approaching Gavin only to pull him into a surprisingly crushing hug, “I can’t imagine how you survived. Don’t worry, we mostly just ignore him.” She pointedly ignores Geoff’s protests as she steps away, grinning in a sort of conspiratorial way that Gavin absolutely adores, “I’m Jack.” He knows that from his thorough research, but says nothing. “Seriously, a friend of Geoff’s is always a friend of ours, so welcome to our little family. I think you’ll get along just fine with these lunatics.”

Clearly won over by her show of trust, Jeremy steps closer and holds out his hand for Gavin to shake with gusto, “My name’s Jeremy. Nice to meet you, dude.” He scrutinizes him for a long stretch of time, concluding, “You’re younger than I thought you’d be.”

Gavin waits a moment, then, upon realizing Jeremy isn’t planning on following that up with anything, clears his throat before answering flatly, “Uh, thanks.” At least he’s _handsome_ , much better looking than in his mug shot.

“No, it’s cool,” Jeremy smiles, though Gavin isn’t really sure why he felt the assurance was necessary, and nods back towards Geoff, Jack, and Ryan, who’s still standing half-obscured by the shadows, “Those assholes had us outnumbered. ‘Til now, I guess. Welcome to the crew.”

“So this is the Golden Boy?” Michael appears at Jeremy’s side, the cool nonchalance of his tone not matching the wild excitement gleaming in his eyes, and Gavin thinks that he’s much better looking than he expected, too, “Michael. I can’t believe Geoff never mentioned you. This crime shit must run in the family, huh?”

“Might as well, mate,” Gavin answers with a wide grin—though, try as he does, he can still feel a tightness to the corners of his lips, an infuriating reminder that he doesn’t have his emotions quite as controlled as he’d like to think, “But to be fair, Geoff didn’t exactly know about the whole hacker bit. Caught him by surprise, or that was the point, anyway.”

“First secret you’ve ever kept in your life,” Geoff quips more than confirms.

Gavin turns to him, lips drawn into what can only be described as a pout, “And how exactly would you know that? I’m a damn good secret keeper, thank you.”

“I dunno, you’ve always had a mouth almost as big as your nose, kid,” his words dissolve into laughter, and he narrowly avoids Gavin’s open palm before tossing his own hands up into the air in mock surrender, “I’m just saying! Little Gav used to tell secrets like it was his fuckin’ job.”

“Well, I’m not _little Gav_ anymore, am I, Geoffrey?” 

The words come out with more bite than he intends and the warehouse falls painfully silent, five pairs of eyes blinking at him. The flare of anger hadn’t been expected, but then, really any emotion these days comes as a surprise, and feels nearly impossible to control. His brain is just starting to edge towards blind panic, ever the useless one when it comes to unexpectedly sticky situations, when finally the last man steps into the light and speaks.

“Jack’s right,” Ryan’s arms are crossed over his chest, and when their gazes meet, his eyes the only thing visible behind the mask, Gavin finds something piercing within them, something he can’t quite place, “I think he’s going to fit in perfectly.”

Tension broken, the silence is replaced by sudden chatter, and between Geoff trying to give out orders and the rest of them barely paying him any mind as they fire questions at their newest member, Gavin is forced to turn his attention away from Ryan. Even still, his mind lingers on his words, and that look, and what it could all mean—and, most importantly, whether or not he really even wants to know.

—

Eventually, Gavin is led back to crew’s actual base of operations, which turns out to be the penthouse Geoff owns in the city. It hardly seems like a good place to hide from cops, but he supposes there’s a reason the Fake AH Crew has been on top for so long regardless of that. Still, he makes a mental note to ask Geoff about their security later as they reach the top floor and pile out of the elevator.

It’s an exceptionally nice apartment, and _big_ —Geoff had mentioned on the way over that he owns a couple of the floors directly below it, as well, but at least upon first entering, Gavin figures the penthouse alone could house all six of them and more if needed. 

He suspects it just might, too, if the way the others are making themselves at home is anything to go by. Ryan disappears down one of the long hallways as Michael kicks off his shoes, tosses his jacket over the back of a chair, and crashes down onto the couch, flicking the television on. On the other side of the living room, Geoff pours Jack a glass of wine and himself a glass of whiskey before the two of them settle into well-loved armchairs on either side of the couch, and they fall into comfortable conversation after Geoff calls out to Gavin to ‘make himself at home’.

It all seems so natural to them, and Gavin can’t help but feel, strangely, as if he’s intruding on the privacy of a real family instead of just a crew’s downtime. He never would have imagined, even knowing Geoff, how close they all would be, but Jack _had_ called them a little family, hadn’t she? A little family. One that he’s supposedly a part of now, though he feels far from it standing all alone in the front entryway. 

Jeremy pops out of what Gavin can only assume is the kitchen, somehow having already managed to collect an armful of snacks and drinks, and raises an eyebrow at him, “What are you doin’ just standing there? C’mon, we’re playing Cloudberry Kingdom.” He tosses a Red Bull at Gavin and, without waiting either for a response or to even see whether or not he caught it (he did, barely), leads the way into the living room. 

By the time Gavin follows (he first has to take off his shoes, then struggle with removing his jacket while holding the Red Bull, then struggle for a moment longer trying to decide where to put it), the snacks have been dumped unceremoniously onto the coffee table and there’s an open spot between Jeremy and Michael on the couch that the latter of the two thumps twice.

“Alright, Gav,” Michael’s tone is charged with playful aggression, and he passes him a controller once he sits, “You better be as good at this as Geoff said you’d to be.” Gavin throws Geoff a pleading look, but receives only a very unhelpful shrug in return. All he can think is that he’s lucky Burnie still loves video games—he’s pretty shit, honestly, but at least he remembers the controls.

“—been trying to do this level for, like, a whole fuckin’ month,” Michael has continued on, and Gavin scrambles to catch up, “and Geoff keeps fucking it up, and Ryan won’t do it for him because he said he’s tired of this game or some dumb shit, so you get to try.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault that those fuckin’ fireballs _suck_ , dude! That part is so hard, and - and it isn’t like Jack made it that last time, either, or Jeremy!” Geoff’s voice cracks as he defends himself, and the pitch of it makes the group of them burst into uproarious laughter.

“Shut the hell up, Geoff,” Michael lets out a final string of breathless giggles what feels like minutes later, readjusting his grip on his controller, “You’re an idiot, we totally got this without you.” 

A minute or so in, and if Gavin is being honest, he isn’t so sure—how could he have forgotten how frustratingly hard this damn game is? But miraculously, after much bickering, swearing, and failing, the four of them literally leap to their feet, cheering all the way, when the level ends in success what feels like hours later. Geoff sulks, naturally, but eventually congratulates them as _the lads_ (as Gavin swiftly declares their group name to be) bounce off the walls and Jack settles on the arm of his chair. As she leans down for a kiss, her smile is warm and fond.

Gavin falls back onto the couch, slumps down, _comfortable_ , and the other two drop on either side, one last bout of laughter dying between them. Someone shifts, and Michael’s knee bumps his, and Gavin looks up at him, his cheeks aching from smiling so hard, and Michael looks back, and he can feel Jeremy’s body rumbling slow still beside him, and maybe it’s crazy, but he realizes with a start that he almost actually feels at home. 

“Alright, I’m going to bed,” Jack’s voice snaps him out of his little moment, and he glances over in time to watch her press another kiss to Geoff’s temple, “You coming?” 

The game had taken awhile, but he still doesn’t think it’s that late until he checks his phone. He misses Geoff’s reply as he shoots a text to Burnie, letting his uncle know that he’s okay, he promises, he decided to stay the night at his friend’s house, and looks back up only after Jeremy nudges him, “What?”

“I _said_ , I’d like to follow my wife to bed soon, so let me give you a tour of the place,” Geoff replies from where he’s already standing, rolling his eyes in a way Gavin chooses to take as fondly, “C’mon, asshole.”

“We’re gonna stay up awhile if you wanna come back out here,” Jeremy offers, and as Gavin follows Geoff down one hallway, he can hear the two of them arguing over what to play next.

Once he’s walked through the whole thing, the penthouse doesn’t seem quite so large, but Geoff informs him that it does, in fact, house all five of them, and him, too, if he were to so choose. “This would be your room,” Geoff ends the tour by opening a door situated between the ones he’d pointed out as Michael’s and Jeremy’s, “So you can do whatever you want with it, stay here whenever... Jack and I live here full time, pretty much.”

Gavin steps into the room, nicely sized but empty save for a bed, a lamp, and a desk against the far wall. His room at Burnie’s is bigger, but it sounds nice to have somewhere to work where he doesn’t have to worry about hiding everything away at a moment’s notice, somewhere he can properly sprawl out and just _do his thing_. He’ll have to find a way to bring some of his stuff over without his uncle noticing, of course, but he can figure that out later—right now, he’s just enjoying having a space all his own. 

“What about the others?” He asks once he’s satisfied, turning to find Geoff leaning against the doorframe. 

“The guys come and go, but usually they stay here, I guess, especially during big jobs, since our, like, _actual_ base is two floors down. The floor right below us is B Team’s—I’ll introduce you to them tomorrow—and they each have a room down there, too. We’ve all got other places in the city, if we need them. Sometimes to lay low, sometimes for business,” Geoff shrugs one shoulder, “and sometimes just to get away from these fuckin’ dickheads for a bit. I’ll go over how everything works with you tomorrow, give you the _full_ tour, and get you your key, so it’s cool if you don’t stay here all the time. ”

“Oh, Geoffrey, thank you!” Gavin bounces on his toes, grinning, having been reminded suddenly of the fact that he’s part of a _crew_ now, _Geoff’s_ crew, and that he gets to do what he loves for a whole _lot_ of money. “This is _exciting_! I like the lads already, and Jack, but it’s a bit intimidating meeting the Mad Mercenary in person.”

“Dude, don’t get me wrong, Ryan’ll fuck a guy _up_ and, y’know, _has_ supposedly killed hundreds of people,” Geoff lets out a squeak of laughter as Gavin’s expression shifts from excited to unimpressed with him, “but give him a minute to warm up to you! He’s not so scary with that mask off. He’s actually a fuckin’ _nerd_.” 

“Whatever you say, Geoff.” Gavin isn’t quite sure if he believes that, unable to forget how Ryan had looked at him back in the warehouse, like he could somehow see straight through the Golden Boy to the furious, frightened, fucked up nineteen-year-old cowering behind him. It had left Gavin feeling strangely _vulnerable_ , and that scares him far more than the man’s staggering bodycount. He needs to be careful around Ryan, that’s for sure, at least until he can figure him out.

Before he can completely space out again, Geoff clears his throat, shuffles his feet, and Gavin is about to pull out the keychains in his pocket, offer Geoff’s to him, say that he should probably go on after Jack to bed when he asks point blank, “Does Burnie know you’re here?” 

The question catches him off guard and he doesn’t answer immediately, mind scrambling. He had hoped it wouldn’t come up so soon, but that was wishful thinking, he realizes now, and _of course_ Geoff wants to know how much he’s told Burnie. Already he can feel his defenses start to rise, and he makes sure to reply carefully, “He knows I’ll be gone for the night.”

“You can’t bullshit me, Gav,” Geoff’s brow furrows, lips turning into a frown, “He was the one who suggested I recruit the Golden Boy in the first place. He doesn’t know it’s you, does he?”

 _That_ is certainly an unexpected twist, but he has little time to dwell on it as it dawns on him that Burnie’s professional relationship to the crew must be more complicated than he thought. Lying and hiding may just prove to be harder than he thought, too. He lets out a quick breath through his nose, calculating, then answers truthfully, “No. He doesn’t.”

“Are you kidding me?” The words come out almost as a growl, and Geoff’s expression has turned thunderous within seconds, darker than Gavin has ever seen before, “Are you seriously fucking kidding me?”

Gavin huffs, throwing his arms up into the air, his temper rising to match, “Well, I didn’t know he’s some big crime boss, did I? What did you expect me to do? Tell my perfectly normal looking uncle that hey, by the way, I’m a wanted criminal who helps other people kill people?”

“You think he won’t figure it out eventually? We’re _partners_! And you’re his nephew, for fuck’s sake—” Geoff jabs a finger towards him, then back at his own chest, “—and practically mine. He’s going to _kill me_ when he finds out I let you in.”

“How would I’ve even known?!” Gavin doesn’t bother trying to contain his rage as it flares red-hot inside of him, “It’s not like either of you ever told me anything! I’m not the same ten-year-old you knew, Geoffrey, how many times have I got to say it? I’m not a damn _child_ anymore. I can make my own decisions.”

Geoff gets close, crowds into his space, deliberate, “This shit isn’t all fun and games, Gavin, it isn’t just hiding behind a laptop screen. It’s _serious work_ , and this is a dangerous city. We risk our lives almost every day, and sometimes we have do really, really fucked up things. Sometimes we even _like_ doing really, really fucked up things. Do you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into?”

“I _know_ Los Santos,” Gavin answers after a pause, jaw clenched and voice low, and the look in his eyes is enough to shake Geoff to his core, “Didn’t Burnie tell you where they found me? Floatin’ in the ocean with a bullet in my shoulder, bleedin’ out? I wasn’t sure since it’s been a year and half and you never even came to see me, but I was _right here_ , Geoffrey! Right under your damn noses the whole time I was ‘missing’, and I was just a _kid_. Stuck in this mingin’ city for _four years_. I think I know what the hell I’m doing. But _you_ let me in, and now you want to change your mind like some self-righteous prick, trying to protect me from something I’ve already become because neither of you were even _there_? _That’s_ bullshit.”

The words hang heavy between them, and he stares at Geoff for a long stretch of time, searching for something he isn’t even quite sure of but doesn’t find, anyway. Eventually, he pushes past the other man, knocking their shoulders roughly, “If you want to kick me out, go ahead. But if you’re trying to save me, you’ve already failed, and that goes for Burnie, too. I’ll keep doing this with you or without you.”

He returns to the living room, tempering his anger all the way, and by the time he hops over the back of the couch to land beside Jeremy, a grin sits on his face, “What are we up to then?”

When Geoff crosses back through the living room minutes later, the lads are too caught up in their Mario Kart race, hollering and laughing and falling into one another, to notice.


End file.
